ETU's & Derailments

[Anonymous]

I apologize if this topic has been posted to death there but I'm still relatively new here & wondered what the inquiring minds at trains.com thought of the subject matter.

In 1992 I read that derailments at Canadian National went up 10 or 20%. I wondered then if having a manned caboose along with having the ETU would have prevented at least some of the derailments. Now with several derailments in recent weeks on Canadian National lines in Western Canada, I wonder if it was due to cutbacks in the maintainence department at CN or if having a manned caboose would help matters so one could detect any problems before they occurr.

[BentnoseWillie]

The SBUs used by CN are bidirectional, as are an increasing number of EOTs in the USA. This means they can initiate an emergency brake application - and in some cases a service application - from the rear, on command from the engineer. Between that, reporting brake pressure and reporting train length, an SBU covers the most likely functions that a crewed van served to prevent accidents .

Most of the problems that a rear-end crew could detect and act upon can be detected better by lineside defect detectors which scan the whole train, whereas the crew at the rear relied upon their eyes, ears and nose from a vantage point that could be thousands of feet from the problem. The benefits of those extra watchers in the rear were outweighed by the hazards, not to speak of the costs of the extra crew members and the van itself. A van was a dangerous place to work at the best of times.

[jchnhtfd]

Docaster -- there really are too many factors involved in derailments to point at one cause or another -- and, more important, there are too few derailments (really!) to regard the recent set of problems as anything more than a bad hair month. Stuff happens...

B-Dubya's comments on vans and the folks who rode them are right on the mark. They did the best they could, but on a two mile long train, at night, in the rain perhaps... there wasn't much they could do. And most derailments nowadays are a combination of track conditions, particular car conditions, and pure bad luck.

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by BentnoseWillie

Most of the problems that a rear-end crew could detect and act upon can be detected better by lineside defect detectors which scan the whole train, whereas the crew at the rear relied upon their eyes, ears and nose from a vantage point that could be thousands of feet from the problem.

IIRC, a hotbox had a smell all its own. I recall seeing something about a cartridge which was installed on roller bearing trucks that would somehow be triggered if a bearing was failing, producing smoke and smell, so the tail end crew could detect it. Still not a very efficient method.

As has been suggested, I have yet to read of anyone who actually worked with cabeese who misses them.